INVASION OF TIMUR-I LANG (Tamerlane) of Samarkand, who had already conquered Persia, Mesopotamia, and Afghanistan (See 13811405). He desolated the whole kingdom of Delhi. Crossing the Indus (Sept. 24), he marched 80 miles a day for two days (Nov. 67) to overtake fugitives at Bhatnair, massacred 100,000 Hindu prisoners before Delhi (Dec. 12), sacked the city (Dec. 17), stormed Meerut (Jan. 9), and fought his way back along the Himalaya to the Indus (Mar. 19).

The KINGDOM OF DELHI, reduced to the Jumna Valley, with tenuous control over the Punjab, was ruled by the Sayyids, who laid nebulous claim to Arab descent from the Prophet, but could collect their revenues only by force. Later the Afghan Buhlul Lodi (145189) founded the Lodi dynasty.

Ahmad Shah enrolled 3,000 foreign mounted archers, who, like the Turks, Arabs, Mongols, and Persians, when employed as ministers, earned by superior qualities and disdain the envy and hostility (massacre 1446) of the native Deccanis, Africans, and Muwallads, half-breed offspring of the latter.

Mahmud I, called Begarha (Two Forts) because of his conquest of Girnar (with Kathiawar, 146970) and Champanir (near Baroda, 148384), when 700 Hindu Rajputs preferred ritual death (jauhar) to Islam. He built magnificently and in exquisite taste the Great Mosque at Champanir, the palace at Sarkhej, the step well at Adalaj, and the pierced stone window screens of Sidi Sayyid's mosque. The tiny Rani Sipari mosque at Ahmadabad (1514) displays harmonious perfection of the ornamental style.

Muhammad III conquered the Konkan and Telingana to both coasts. He died at 28 of drink, the curse of nearly all his house, and of remorse at having slain (while drunk) his best minister, Mahmud Gavan, the builder of the large quadrangular college at Bidar.